Ah, Fall. The wood chips in my front yard are scattered with the first yellow leaves, my neighbors drop the last of their summer harvest on my front porch, and the furnace chokes and sputters its first breath since March. The weather has turned crisp, my dog has turned frisky, and Einstein, the prodigal one, has returned home.
Old houses have their challenges. For instance, I have convinced myself that the crack in the bathroom ceiling adds charm. The crumbling steps off the back porch are historic. My "bury a body" cellar is practical, if not a little disturbing. And the floors, with their web-work of rotten wood, allow for easy access to critters, especially small, furry ones with twitching pink noses and beady, red eyes.
Einstein first found his way into my home last summer. My husband and I were at the tail end of our marriage, and he was the one who first discovered that we had a houseguest.
"Um, did you buy these crackers with a hole in the box?" He asked, reaching into the snack drawer and holding up a box of Triscuits with a noticeable gap where the calorie count should have been.
We dug through the cereal boxes and bags of chips to discover that our houseguest had taken quite a few liberties with our processed carbohydrates. I threw everything away, scrubbed the drawer with Lysol, bleach, and Comet. And when we went to the grocery store, the new snacks went to the top of the cupboard over the sink.
Later that week, Fred, my black Labrador mutt, awoke me from a dead sleep by barking at the refrigerator. I awoke, turned on the light, and watched horrified as a white streak raced two inches from my feet, only to disappear under the stove.
Two nights passed, and I was in my bedroom, working on the computer, when the creature's curiosity got the best of him. I slowed my typing to a hunt and peck and gaped as the brazen rodent walked from the linoleum to the carpet, stopped three feet from my chair, and stood up on his back legs to sniff the air. In one fluid motion, I slammed the door, shoved a towel under the crack and watched as he disappeared into it.
"I think I got him," I yelled to my husband who was in the other room watching television.
He entered the second door to the bedroom and closed it quickly behind him.
"He's under there," I whispered, motioning furtively to the towel.
"What now?"
"Hand me that glass," I said, waving my hand at the empty water glass on the nightstand. "I'll put it over him, and we'll road trip to Kansas tonight."
With glass in hand, I slowly peeled back the smallest corner of the towel, and watched in dismay as the ball of white escaped under the exposed crack in the door. Flinging open the door, I was just in time to see the mouse streak past my dog, Fred's head barely lifting in unconcerned boredom as the mouse disappeared under the sofa.
I laid out traps. Five of them, with peanut butter. Under the refrigerator, the stove, the washing machine, the sofa, and behind the claw-foot bathtub. I waited. And checked. And the peanut butter disappeared.
"He's brilliant," I muttered to my husband. "I'm not sure how he's not triggering the traps, but we may be dealing with a mouse bent on world domination, here."
My husband smiled vaguely, as was his usual protocol when I spouted nonsense. And a week later, he left.
The mouse stayed.
When a guest came in October, I opened my sofa bed to discover that serious nesting had occurred; the stuffing had been shredded in a spectacular manner. I started noticing mouse droppings by the mousetrap under the stove. His nighttime adventures in the wiring of the refrigerator kept me awake. A handful of times, I flung on the kitchen light, hair sticking up wildly, and tried to block him in one place, or the other, to no avail. I gave up. I named him. For the first time in my life, I contemplated buying a cat.
In November, right around the time that the world seemed intent on caving completely in on me, a smell began to permeate from the general vicinity of the stove. I ignored it for two days, and then called my step-dad.
"I think I have a gas leak," I hissed worriedly into the phone. "I'm afraid to turn on the oven because I'll probably light the whole place on fire." I glanced nervously in my daughter's room where she played, completely unaware of her imminent peril.
"Have you looked behind the stove?" he asked, ever the voice of reason. "Sometimes food falls back there and rots. Check there first and then call me back."
I hung up the phone and moved tentatively to the stove. I pulled out the broiler pan, and peered into the darkness. There was something there, but without a light, I couldn't tell what. I grabbed the flashlight from the laundry room and shined it along the floor. A small, white body, crumpled under the metal of the mouse trap, lay still, a pool of brown, dried blood surrounding his tiny head.
My heart fell. I pulled myself up into a sitting position, put my head against my knees and sobbed. My daughter stumbled from her room in alarm.
"What's wrong, Mommy?" Her four-year old hands caressed my back.
I struggled to get a hold of the situation. "Oh, Baby, it's nothing. One of the traps I set finally killed the mouse, and for some stupid reason, it's making me a little sad; that's all."
Her big, brown eyes filled with tears and she sat down on the floor next to me. "Stop crying," she ordered shakily. "because you're making me cry."
And we did. We cried over Einstein, and his unexpected death. And of course, we cried because by that point, we needed to cry. We needed the excuse to sit on the kitchen floor and have a grand ol' pity party.
Later, I removed Einstein with a plastic bag and scrubbed away his blood. I replaced the broiler pan and went about the job of getting on with the night.
But it wasn't Einstein. Days later, the scuttle under the refrigerator returned, and I laid out more traps. Peanut butter continued to disappear, and occasionally, a snap would resound. I would dispose of the body, and life would continue to tick. I concluded that Einstein, my genius white mouse, had invited his dumb cousins into my house for the winter. He nibbled, he escaped. They gorged, and got snapped. Einstein, in his evil genius state, lost my sympathy. The tears over his death became a moment of weakness, and I laid out rat poison in the cellar. Winter came, and the last of the mice died away.
Last night, a click clack of nails on the kitchen floor roused me from sleep. Assuming it was Fred needing to go to the bathroom in the middle of this night, as he does from time to time, I pulled myself away from the warmth of my covers and shuffle- slid across the kitchen to the back door. Fred was not waiting for me, as is his normal custom on nights when he needs to go out. I looked into my daughter's room and saw him curled up, head tucked under his tail, undisturbed. Convinced it had been part of a lingering dream, I returned to bed. Relaxing back into sleep, the faintest of scuttles could be heard, coming from the kitchen.
I can only conclude that Einstein is back. Sure, it could be any number of random mice, seeking a warm place to pass away the cold of winter, but only a mouse of Einstein's fortitude could have traversed the maze of lethal rat poison in the cellar to emerge unscathed and hungry for more. I have yet to see the mouse droppings, he has yet to discover the new stash of snacks, but I bought the traps today. A year has passed, and the world is a completely different place. Einstein makes me smile wistfully about a year spent moving from that place to here. Here is good. I know so much more now than I did then. For instance, if you put the mouse trap in a paper lunch sack, when it triggers, all you have to do is grab the sack and throw it away. No body to illicit unwarranted sympathy. No smell. No blood.
Welcome home, Einstein.
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